When Grace Appeared | Redeemer Church

December 7, 2025 (Sunday Morning)

Bible Text: Titus 2:11-14 | Brad O'Dell

Series: When Grace Appeared: Salvation in the Pastoral Letters

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When Grace Appeared| Titus 2:11-14
Brad O’Dell | December 7, 2025

Go ahead and turn your Bibles to the book of Titus. Titus 2 is where we’re going to be this morning, and we’re going to begin the message by just reading the Scripture together, and then I’ll have some comments on it to introduce it there. But we’ll start by reading the passage. Titus 2:11-14 says,

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”

I’ll read just those first few words of the first verse again. “The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people.”

At Christmas, in this season every year, we all yearn for salvation in some sense, and I think this is pictured in the stories of salvation that we like to watch or enjoy at this time of year, every year.

There’s The Christmas Carol, right? What is the story of The Christmas Carol? It’s about Scrooge and how by the end of the story he’s become a new man, he’s had a complete change from who he was.

In the Home Alone movie, at the end of the movie Kevin’s relationship is restored with his mother; and even old man Marley, the breaches in his family relationships have been completely healed.

In the Hallmark movies, right, there is true love that is found and this fixes everything, and not only in the individual’s lives, but usually an entire city somehow is redeemed by this love relationship, and the wonder of it is that it just keeps happening over and over again! So, stories of salvation.

Maybe a more serious movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey’s life is literally saved, physically, but also we know there’s a deeper-wrought change in his life as well.

Stories of salvation are these stories that we return to year after year and we enjoy in this season. And I think there’s something about these stories, and what we might call in the secular vernacular the “magic” of Christmas, something about the magic of Christmas that we find in these stories, it can tend to seep into our hearts and let us in this season also nurse a desire for ourselves at the end of the year, a desire for newness, for change, for wonder, for healing in our life situations, whatever that might be. Right? We yearn for salvation in many ways, and it’s a keen yearning that comes at this time of year for us, every year.

I think there’s something right in that, because salvation is at the core of why we celebrate Christmas, as we just read in these verses. And I know though culturally we have stripped away the true story of Christmas and twisted this sentiment in various ways in entertainment culture, in ways that might be unhelpful, the fact remains that salvation is at the heart of Christ’s birth, and therefore that means this season is a season of rejoicing in the true salvation that we have in Christ. That’s what our passage is about today, and that’s what we’re going to focus on.

We’re in a series here in this Advent season that we’re calling “Salvation in the Pastoral Epistles.” The pastoral epistles are the books of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, all books written by Paul to pastors (that’s why they’re called the pastoral letters or epistles). And we’re especially focusing on these passages that are speaking about the salvation we have in Christ, but they’re also using this language of appearing or appearance, and we’re going to see that in the passage that we’re handling today.

So, this is going to be our outline for the passage as we work through the sermon today. Advent is a season for:

1. Rejoicing in God’s Grace
2. Living New Lives
3. Hoping in Eternal Glory

That’s how we’re going to work through the passage.

1. Rejoicing in God’s Grace

So first, Advent is a season for rejoicing in God’s grace. Just read the beginning of verse 11 with me again: “For the grace of God has appeared.” The grace of God has appeared! We see that instance of this word “appearing” that we are trying to tie together in these pastoral epistles and it has the idea of the word Advent in it.

If you’ve grown up in a liturgical tradition, you’re very used to that word “advent.” If you have not, then you’re not as used to the word “advent.” The word “advent” denotes the coming of an event or the coming of an individual, but it could also speak to the arrival of said event or the arrival of some said individual. And there’s something of the anticipation that something is coming, and when it arrives there will be a proclamation or there will be something significant that happens. That’s what Advent is.

Of course, in this season we speak about the advent of Christ, the expectation that Christ will come into the world, and that’s what we’re looking at.

But here we see this appearance, in the words of Paul; this is an appearance of grace. Before we move too far into the sermon, I want to get just a working definition of grace. What are we talking about? It’ll help us grab hold of the passage a little bit more. I’ll put it on the screen. We’re going to simply say this: Grace is God’s kindness, goodness, and blessing to those who are undeserving.

Actually in these verses we’re reading, Titus 2:11-14, it’s a single sentence in the Greek, and “grace” is the main subject that animates everything else in the passage. So we’re going to be focusing on grace.

I think it’s just really interesting here that Paul, in speaking of the appearance or the coming of Christ, just sums up all of who Jesus is and all he did—he sums it up with this one word, grace. I think that’s instructive to us, right? The very fact of Jesus, the fact that he existed, the fact that he came to the earth, the fact that he exists, declares this astounding truth across all of time: that God is a God of benevolence and love and kindness, and especially to those who are undeserving of kindness from God. The very fact of Jesus makes that proclamation across all eternity, because the coming of Jesus was the coming of grace.

Now, I think we should just recognize that in the ancient world that the ancient church was birthed in, the appearance or the incarnation of the divine would not be considered a grace in and of itself. There is a lot of mythology, a lot of worship of false gods in various ways, and there are many legends of gods who became man or who came as a human in some sense or regard, but those were not considered appearances of grace. You could think of legends of gods who would come in the form of superheroes, and that’s neat. We have some cool stories that we tell from ancient mythology about stuff like that, but it’s not really significant for human beings in the sense that we can relate to this god in any way. They’re very unlike us.

There are legends of gods coming in secret or in mystery, seeking out their own devices and doing their own little plans that were veiled or hidden from human beings, and that’s not really consequential for human beings because it doesn’t impact their lives in any of the ways that significantly matter to them.

More often, we see and hear tales of the gods coming as abusers, really. They come and they make human beings their playthings. They find concubines of sorts. You know, we get these stories of Zeus and all these Greek gods inhabiting human form and finding half-human, half-god heirs. Those are the stories, right?

What does this result in? For humans, it just results in trauma and distrust in our approach to the divine. We hear stories of gods in the ancient world appearing simply to judge and to dominate. They want to just come up and show, “Hey, I’m the all-powerful one, and you’re not.” Of course, this just leads humans to fear and a certain feeling that destruction is coming. Not appearances of grace.

But Jesus’ appearance was very unlike these things. First of all, Jesus’ appearing was not a legend. It wasn’t just a timeless idea that we can kind of learn something from but it really doesn’t have any purchase in the real world. No, Jesus came in history. He came into a particular people, into a particular time, into a particular family, and embedded in a particular cultural moment. That matters because it means that it’s something real that we can hold onto and has a real impact in our lives.

But not only did God become man, but he came as one of us, in humility. And that means that he’s someone that we can relate to, someone that we can understand, someone that when he teaches us, we can hear the words communicated in a way that actually make an impact on us.

Jesus came as a baby, just like all of us came as babies. And he learned and he developed and he grew, just like we had to learn and develop and grow.

He came as a normal guy. The passage we heard right at the beginning, when Brian came up this morning, we saw that Jesus wasn’t particularly beautiful, tall, strong, right? He didn’t have the genetic jackpot that he was born into. He was just a normal-looking guy, kind of like most of you guys are just normal-looking, right? (No, I’m kidding. That was supposed to be scratched from my notes. I left it in there accidentally.)

Jesus came as a brother, walking alongside us, someone we could look up to, someone who can give us a good example and encourage us along the way. He came as a friend, a confidant, someone we could enjoy, someone we can put our trust in, and someone who could encourage us along the journey. He came as a patient mentor and a teacher.

More than all this, in everything we see in Jesus’ life, we see that he appeared in love and in great compassion. He came to give and not to get. He says of himself in Mark 10, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

The incarnation in and of itself is not worthy of worship or praise or adoration. It could have been inconsequential to us, or it could have been even a horror. However, it is the centrality of grace and the character and the mission of Jesus that makes this season and makes his incarnation wonderful and notable and worthy of our adoration and praise every time, when we come to this season of the year.

See, Advent is a season for remembering this: the very fact of Christmas, the very fact that it exists, means—hear this—that God is a God of goodness and of care, and he desires to bless you and care for you, even if—and I’ll say especially if—you know you’re very undeserving of it. That’s what Christmas means to us, and that is worthy of our great joy and our worship this season.

The eternal Son became incarnate. He came into our world. He walked in our shoes. He sat at our tables. He experienced all of our travails and temptations, yet without sin. In his teaching, in his miracles, in his relationships, in his character, he revealed something. He revealed the heart of the Father to us, and what we see in that revelation is something overwhelming: it’s that the heart of the Father is one of immense grace and love for us.

So, in this Advent season, this is what I want to get from the first point, just that simple statement, “the grace of God has appeared”—I want us to get this. There’s a way for us to take all the goodness of this season and turn it in worship to God and delight in the grace that is ours in God. As we look at those nativities and see the Christ child; as you enjoy the lights that are so beautiful that we put up this time of year and it reminds you of when light came to darkness, both in the world and into your personal life; as we sing the same old timeless songs; my heart for us is that we wouldn’t just enjoy those things for their own sake, but that we would see them as a picture of the love of God and we would turn to Lord in prayer, in a prayer that sounds something like this: “Lord, you know me and you love me. Your grace has surely appeared in Christ, and I know your grace is surely at work in my life, even if I struggle to see it sometimes. I thank you. I put my trust in you.”

The Advent season is a season for rejoicing in the sureness of God’s grace in our life. That’s the first point.

2. Living New Lives

However, it’s not just a season for rejoicing in that grace, but it’s also a season for walking in grace, and that’s what we’re going to look at next. Advent is a season for living new lives, and this is really what the vast portion of the passage is about, especially in verses 12 and 14. Let’s read it again. We’ll read the whole thing, and again, we’re focusing on 12 and 14 here, but we’ll read 13 as we go.

So, we see this grace that we’ve been talking about brings salvation, and the salvation is then spelled out. What does salvation mean? What’s it look like? And it’s explained a few different ways in verses Titus 2:12, 14.

In verse 14, it says that Jesus’ grace has redeemed us from all lawlessness and has purified us, and that’s probably the way that we are most used to thinking about Jesus’ saving grace. It’s a salvation from something; it’s a salvation from sin.

But it’s spoken of a little bit differently in verse 12, and it says that grace trains us, it trains us or it teaches us to renounce certain things and to live toward other things. And that’s a really interesting way of speaking of grace, that it’s a trainer or a teacher in our lives. It’s really spoken of kind of like a coach or a teacher whose job is to take us from where we are and to help us grow into our full potential. It’s spoken of almost as this active operating principle in our lives, not just something that’s been given to us, but something that is working actively in us, leading us more into the fullness of what we’re trying to accomplish.

It’s spoken of elsewhere in Scripture. I’ll just put a couple on the screen. Look at 2 Corinthians 9:8. It says, “God is able to make all grace abound to you,” and then what does that grace do? “So that, having all sufficiency in all things, you may abound in every good work.” So, there’s the same idea. God gives you grace so that you may abound in every good work.

In 1 Corinthians 15:10 Paul says, “By the grace of God, I am what I am.” He’s speaking of salvation there. “And his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but it was the grace of God that is in me.” Paul’s speaking about his works in the Lord and his good works and how he worked harder than everybody. He’s saying, “But it wasn’t even me; it was the grace of God at work in me.” He’s speaking of grace as this operating principle in his life, helping him to walk out the life that he is called to.

So, I think this helps us build out our definition of grace, and what I have is what we covered just at the beginning of the sermon, but just adding on a little bit more. I think this gives a fuller definition of the variety of ways the Bible speaks of grace. Grace is, in the first sense, God’s disposition of favor and kindness and blessing toward us, even though we are undeserving; but it is also this enabling influence, like a trainer in our lives, that leads us into more and more godliness. Of course, that is also a gift that is free and undeserved, given by God in our lives.

Piper says it like this—I think it’s good—he says, “Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned, grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon.” I think that’s really helpful.

We see in this passage how grace is then supposed to be operating in our lives. And this is really important for us to think about at this time of year, right? It’s not the sort of thing we tend to think about at this time of year, but the passage puts it right in front of us, so let’s handle it. There’s a few things it says.

(1) First, it says it negatively—it’s stated negatively—and it’s also stated positively. Negatively, it says when grace is operating in your life, when you’ve been given grace and you are walking in grace, it should look like this: you should be renouncing, turning away from, disassociating from ungodliness, worldly passion, and we can even add lawlessness in from verse 14. We could probably look at all the different words and find some differences, but I think we could collapse them into just this idea. These are all actions, thoughts, words that are either antithetical to God’s character and word, or they are done without a regard for his will and glory. They don’t really have any thought of God, any consideration of God in them, and so, in that sense, they are worldly because they have taken God completely out of the picture. So, negatively, those are supposed to be things that we’re saying, “I’m not about those things.” If I see that in my life, I put it away and I do something else, I do the opposite.

(2) And then it says it positively, and I have a few definitions here that I modified from Jerry Bridges, but his stuff was helpful here. We see self-control, uprightness, godliness.

Self-control—this is the self-restraint and strength of will to say yes to good things and no to sinful things. We’re called to self-control. Sometimes we just think, “I hope self-control happens,” and maybe at this time of year we’re like, “I don’t really want to do the self-control thing,” right? But we’re called to self-control. This is who we are in Christ: saying yes to good things, no to sinful things.

Uprightness—conducting ourselves rightly and appropriately towards others.

Then godliness—this is the opposite of ungodliness. This is seeking God’s glory and will and worship as we live unto him.

Of course, to this list we can also add purity and a zeal for doing good works, as we see in verse 14.

The point is Advent is a season not to kind of release on these things, but to make sure these things are operating in our lives and we’re walking in the new lives that are ours in Christ. These are wonderful lives. It’s a gift of God to be able to walk in the good, the right, the true, the beautiful life. Let’s make this season a season where we zero in and we walk in this life that is ours.

Something important from verse 14—and I’m just going to hit it and jump off of it, but I think it can confuse us if we just move past it. It says this, that Jesus has redeemed us from all lawlessness, and this is to purify for himself a people for his own possession. “Purify for himself a people for his own possession.” It’s saying the same thing twice. It’s a pretty strong statement.

This is the idea that we belong to Christ now. Jesus didn’t just redeem us from all lawlessness to make us a law unto ourselves, to make us gods unto ourselves, to where we just kind of follow our own impulses and desires. No, he called us into service of him, and this is something important. It’s a big idea, but we’re only going to hit it. It’s this: when you are liberated from one thing, you are always liberated to serve something else. There’s never this idea where you’re liberated from everything, and then you never have to serve anybody or you never have to worship anything else, you don’t have to follow anything else. That’s just not how we were designed. God designed us, he made us as people who were created to worship and to serve, and that element of worship and service is always going to be present in our lives.

The question is not if you will worship and serve something else, it’s who you will worship and serve, and then secondly, what will that worship do to your soul?

I think it’s a great lie of all freedom and liberation movements to indicate that there’s some system or some people or some set of rules that, if I could just shirk those off, then I will be just this completely free person in and of myself, with no restraints on me—lawlessness—I’ll have no laws on top of me. But this presents it as, “Hey, lawlessness is actually an inhibitor in your life, it is a terror in your life, it’s a destroying element in your life.”

That’s not what we’re doing. We are called to be liberated from something to serve the one true God, and that’s what Jesus does for us.

So see, here we just see this, that we have been redeemed and purified to serve Jesus, and then what does that service do to us? What does it do to our souls? Well, we just see something really beautiful: it makes us a people who, more and more, love to do what is good and right and true. We are people who are zealous for that which is good and right, and that’s a wonderful thing, and that’s what service to Jesus does. It brings out the beauties of God’s graces in our lives more and more, and we grow into the fullness of who we are, and that is more and more satisfying to us.

So, here’s where I want this to land. (I said it a little bit, but I’ll say it again.) I think we can tend to get to this season of the year, and we want to relax a little bit, and we want to coast, right? We’re tired. It’s the end of the year. We have a little bit of vacation. The weather outside is cold; we’re not going outside. We’re going to sit by a fire, we’re going to wear all the warm things, and we’re going to coast a little bit.

I think a lot of that is good, but I think what this does a lot of times is this attitude and this approach can seep into our spiritual walks as well, and maybe we want to just kind of coast and check out a little bit on our pursuit of the Lord, on some of our spiritual disciplines, some of our worship, some of our self-control over some of the vices that can, you know, creep up in our lives.

The point is this: Advent is not a season for that. No season is a season for that, but Advent especially is not a season for that. As we celebrate the grace of God that has come in Christ and the salvation, we should know that it has called us to a new type of life, a glorious type of life; and checking out on those things, relaxing on those things, that’s not going to satisfy you, because that’s not who you are. Instead, give yourself more fully into these things. Take these times off to press into the Lord more. Bring the Lord more into the center part of your conversations with your family and with your spouse and pursue the Lord more and more, because this is what brings you joy. The Lord has made you a person who is to be zealous for good works. Let’s make the Advent season the season where—of all times of the year maybe—we live most fully in the redeemed life that Jesus has purchased for us by his grace.

3. Hoping in Eternal Glory

Last point—Advent is a season for hoping in eternal glory. This is all-important. Look at verse 13 again. It says, “...waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Here we see a mention of another appearing. In verse 11, we saw Paul mention the appearance with the word “grace,” and we see he’s speaking of the advent of grace, and here in verse 13, we hear him speak of an advent of glory.

Our celebration of the Advent season, our celebration of Christ’s first coming, should always lead us to then start thinking about and yearning for his second coming. You see this in the songs we’ve already sung this morning, that as we sing in celebration of Jesus’ coming as a baby and the life he lived and the salvation he brought, immediately we start singing about his second coming, looking forward to that final day when we will see him face to face.

We’re always supposed to, at this time of year, yearn for Jesus’ second coming, right? It’s that day when his saving grace comes in its fullness, when heaven meets earth and all things are made new; that day when Jesus comes in victory, finally to reign as the rightful King with all of his people and a perfected earth for all of eternity. Those are the things that we are looking forward to at this time of year.

Really, no matter what season we’re in, this is our blessed hope. It’s our blessed hope, or that is the hope that brings blessing.

I say it like that just to take the contra of it—that is, it’s not a hope that will bring you a curse. It’s not a hope that will bring you a curse. At the end of it all, you won’t look and say, “Boy, this was a disappointment. The promises of God did not line up to what he said they were.” That would be something of a curse. Or you’re not going to come to the end of it all and say, “Boy, it’s a curse because it turns out it was false, and I was a fool for believing these things all along.” That’s not the hope that we have. That’s a false hope. We’re not hoping beyond hope. We have a sure hope in Jesus, and we know that it’s a sure hope because Jesus has come, and we have seen his salvation wrought, and he has promised us that he is coming again. So we have a sure hope that we will see him again, because he says he is coming again.

It is a blessed hope, and it will be a blessing in that day—eternal blessings—but it is also a blessing for us in the here and now, as we put our eyes on that second coming.

I think that’s the main focus of these verses here. I think it’s really interesting that the verses we talked about in the previous point, about just living out the lives that God has called us to, that Paul interrupts that thought with this verse about waiting for our blessed hope. Verses 12 and 14 are very similar verses; they’re talking about the same thing. In fact, if you were to read into Titus 3, he’s just going to kind of say a lot of the same things again. But he interrupts the thought right here to put in this statement, and I think it’s instructive for us in this sense. In the same way that looking backward at the grace of God that was displayed in Christ—in the same way that helps us to grow in grace or to walk in sanctification, so looking forward to the second advent of Christ and putting our hope in seeing Jesus in his glory gives us strength to live the lives that we are called to live in the here and now. We need that strength to live.

In my study, Sinclair Ferguson pointed me to something that I’d never heard of. Brian’s heard of it, but none of the rest of us have heard of it. It’s a book by a guy called William Hay Aitken, a nineteenth-century British preacher who wrote a whole book on these verses, and he’s really playing off this idea of grace being a trainer or a teacher in our life. The book is called The School of Grace.

His idea is that the school of grace, if we think of it as a building, must be well lit for the schoolhouse to operate properly, and he says it like this—Aiken suggests that the two comings of Christ are like two windows in the school of grace.

“Through the western window, a solemn light streams from Mount Calvary, and through the eastern window shines the light of sun rising, the herald of a brighter day. In this way, the school of grace is well lighted, but we cannot afford to do without the light from either the west or the east.”

We can’t close one of the windows. As Christians, we always have to be looking to both. We have to be looking back to the grace that we know is ours in Christ because of what he’s done in his life and at the cross and in his resurrection and ascension; and we always look forward to the coming glory of Christ, because that is our eternal hope; and from that we can start to live in the here and now in the way that we are called to live. If you close one of the windows, the school of grace is not operating the way that it should.

This is where I want to apply it. When we think about this already-not yet aspect of the kingdom of Jesus—that it’s already here, the grace has already come, the blessings have already been given; but it’s not yet here in its fullness—I just want to focus on that fact that yes, as we talked about in this sermon, the grace, the glory, the blessings of Christ are a great encouragement in us, and they’re a great strength because they have already come. But the Advent season is a good season to just remember and to dwell on the fact that they have not yet come in their fullness. Though Advent is a season for resting in all that we do enjoy in Christ, it should also be a time of yearning or longing for what we haven’t yet fully enjoyed.

That means this: Advent for us should be a season of measured expectations, and maybe the expectation of some mixed joys; because the kingdom isn’t here in its fullness, and all the blessings aren’t given, and all the grace is not manifested in our lives yet. As the Old Testament believers waited anxiously for the coming of a deliverer who would set them free, so we still are waiting for the advent of Christ, with a sure hope (because Christ has already come), but we still await the advent of Christ to deliver us fully and to finally bring us into eternal rest and wellbeing.

It means this: we know that in this not-yet period of time that we live in, as we wait, in the Advent season we can expect this. There will be much that is still difficult. There will be much that is still sad. There will be much that is still disappointing in our lives. Sometimes this season will bring those particularly to the fore and make them more prominent in our lives.

We know that there will be many experiences of loss with accompanying grief, or even fresh experiences of a past loss that brings fresh grief in this season, and this is a season where that will come up a little more strongly. I think a solid understanding of these realities helps us, because it teaches us not to deny or minimize those things or avoid them in unhelpful ways; but it teaches us to process them before the Lord, to—yes, long for and yearn for the time when you will be with Jesus to find total healing and rest—but you process them in hope, and you process them in a balanced way, because you’re also remaining thankful for his graces that are in your life, and you know that that grace will surely come in its fullness down the road.

I think the point of this passage is—maybe we can say it like this—let’s not put all of our hopes and dreams in the events of this season. There are so many good things, so many wonders, so many things that will fill us with joy; but they’ll also leave us a little unsatisfied. They’ll also leave us just a little short of where we need to be. Sometimes the difficulties of life can even rise to the surface and be a little stronger. Advent is a season for bringing that before the Lord and knowing that my salvation is not yet complete, the kingdom is not yet here in its fullness, but it surely will be, and I can rest in the hope of eternal glory with Jesus.

Church, there will be a day when we will finally see Jesus face-to-face, and we’ll speak with him as a friend face-to-face. We’ll fall right at his feet and worship him as we dwell on him or as we behold him in the full splendor of his lordship. On that day, as we gaze at the wonder of the brilliance of his glory, something will happen. We will also be changed into the same image. “These lowly bodies will be transformed into the same image”; that’s the language of Philippians 3. Then, for all of eternity, God will show us the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us. That’s the language of Ephesians 3. This is our blessed hope. Let’s make the Advent season a season where we put some thought and some worship and some time into dwelling on our blessed hope.

Hear the apostle John from his first letter. He says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”

I think we learn from this passage that Advent is this great season for us to rejoice in God’s grace, to live new lives by grace, and also to make sure we are putting our hope in the eternal glory that is still to come. Of course, all seasons of the year are seasons for doing those things, but maybe especially so in the Christmas season, when we celebrate the birth of Christ and the advent of grace. Let’s pray.

Lord, we thank you for your grace in our lives. Lord, we confess that we readily forget it sometimes, or our vision is clouded. Sometimes our souls are weak and we let go of a recognition of all of your graces and your gifts in our lives. But Lord, we remember it now. We are struck by the wonder of Jesus, of Christ made flesh, and the fact that that was a movement of your grace toward us, to show that you love us, you see us, you care for us, you’re here for us, you have a plan for us, and you will not let us go. What a wonder! Lord, fill us up with the joy of that truth this Advent season.

Lord, also encourage us. For those who have griefs that they’re carrying this Advent season, for those who have difficulties, for those for whom this season seems to be passing them by and some of the joys haven’t caught them yet, we pray that they would have a joy in that which is unshakeable, unmoveable, and that’s the fact that they have a God in heaven who knows them and who is here for them, and they can come to you in their times of need. We also ask that you fill them up with the strong, sure hope of their eternal reward when they see you face to face.

Lord, we love you. We pray that you are honored and glorified in all we do in this season. Give us the grace to walk in the new lives we have in Christ, for our joy and for the joy of others around us, and also for your glory in our lives. You are worthy of it all. It’s in the name of Jesus we pray these things, amen.